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Thursday, April 10, 2008

digital identities

It is my hope to contribute to a new thought rather than be redundant. I started thinking about this after reading a blog from BudtheTeacher a week or so ago. So who are we when we are online, what prompts us to make the choices we make about what information we do and do not post online? Am I making the completely wrong choice in having my name, state, and school in my profiles? I wonder.

I have decided for now to give out a lot of information about myself. I hope it does serve my purposes. I am looking to market myself for a computer technology position and really want my network presence to help my cause. I think that even after I do land my dream job. I will continue to update my profiles. I like hearing from and collaborating with people who have similar interests as I do, people I can connect with and use as resources. I think this is a lot easier to do if you know where I am located and what I am about, my likes, dislikes, the point in my career, etc…

I think that in this day of internet connectivity or should I say heaven, we redefine ourselves my being a part of a web 2.0 community such as a wikis or blogs. I think that people posts make us think and that their reactions give us a sense of what they see in us or even what we see in them.

I found a great article “Thinking about Digital Identities” that states the following:

“There exists today a very useful tool for monitoring online identity, which helps to clarify some of the complexities that participants in the digital world face, where, “It's an uncanny situation; the creative act becomes a dispersion of self.” (Miller 29) That tool is an RSS newsreader, also known as a feed aggregator. In short, it is a piece of software that continuously pulls information you have requested towards you, delivering it to your desktop. Mine is called FeedDemon. It is a tool for wrangling identity:

  • It delivers what I write about in my own self-controlled space (my blog, for example). It confronts me with my professional, performed self.
  • It delivers me as performing on other people's spaces, mainly via comments I have written. These are representatives of my identity where I have actually gone myself and actively participated elsewhere, generally in my professional persona, but not always.
  • It delivers me as performing on other people's spaces, but as they perceive me, such as through quotes they have pulled from my own writings, but also from information drawn from private emails, phone calls, in-person conversations and chat.
  • It delivers other people's reactions to me, their agreement and disagreement, their misunderstandings and even deliberate mis-quotes. If I then respond to these issues, FeedDemon delivers those responses as well.
  • It notifies me when someone has simply mentioned my name, my blog or my business.
  • It notifies me when someone has bookmarked something I have written, or that someone has written about me, without the person who actually bookmarked the article commenting at all.
  • Today all this information is primarily text, but increasingly, audio, photographic and video information can be wrangled as well.”

Well now this brings me to a whole new thought, Feeds controlling digital identities. I find this to be a particularly interesting thought. I happen to agree with, we are all participating in all of this discussions and conversations and we decide what and who that content is coming from, is no wonder that without even realizing it, we are redefining our digital identities almost every day.

On a final note, I did come across an interesting profile on Mr. Educator new to the blogging community that stated:

I am intentionally anonymous on this blog because I believe who I am is not as important as what I do and believe. This blog, however, is not solely intended to be my space to rant...rather, I hope that discussions about education and other topics of interest can take place”.

Well, I do not know if I agree, but it does leave me to think…

My podcast on digital identities

3 comments:

Torchgirl said...

Your Personal Learning Network is your digital identity. They're one and the same. And if you don't listen to and believe everything everyone tells\feeds you, your still on the right track!

Jeff said...

I tried to listen to your podcast but the button doesn't link to your podcast...can you help?

Thanks

shegstrom said...

I fixed the button that links to my post, Thanks Jeff for pointing it out. :)